
5' 



LIBRARY OF CUNun^. 



017 298 158 6 • 



F 880 
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Copy 1 



ULL Jo ktELLCT. 

ONE OF TIIF: fathers OF OREGON. 

Teachers of history, who hold in their hands the scales 
of justice, should, above all others, strive to weigh care- 
fully the claims of the individual men with whom they 
have to deal, and to place before their readers not only a 
few isolated facts, but the explanation of those facts, 
without which the student of history is but half educated, 
if educated at all. 

That portion of the Northwest coast which was long- 
known as the "Oregon territory" enjoys the distinction 
of having been fathered by moi-e men with a greater 
variety of purposes and ambitions than any other of the 
family of commonwealths under the United States flag. 
First, there were the English and the American explorers. 
Gray and Vancouver, and Lewis and Clark, in the em- 
ploy of their respective companies or governments, whose 
acts formed the foundation of opposing claims to the 
northwest, and particularly the region drained by the 
Columbia River. These form a class by themselves. 

Then follows John Jacob Astor, pioneer of the fur 
trade — of commerce — on the River of the West.^ His 
claim to be the father of Oregon w^as filched from him by 
his English partners, who paid him forty per cent, of the 
value of his stock in trade, and assumed the sovereignty 
of the country occupied by them. 

iTo be exact, Captains Jonathan and Nathan Winship, who attempted a set- 
tlement for trade and colonization at Oak Point, in ISIO, but were driven away 
by the summer flood, which destroyed their plantation and carried off their 
buildings, should be named first in designing an establishment on the Columbia. 
They were deterred from repeating their experiment by hearing of the Astor en- 
terprise. 



382 Frances Fuller Victor. 



There was about that time — 1815 — a young New 
Enghxnder, Hall J. Kelley, who resented the neglect of 
the United States to protect Oregon from seizure by a 
foreign commercial corporation, and who essayed to stir 
up a colonizing activity in the j^eople. He was in spirit 
at least the father of the colonists. He was succeeded at 
a considerably later period by missionary colonizers, at 
whose head was Jason Lee, the father of the Methodist 
settlement in the Wallamet Valley, who, since he was 
successful, may be named one of the fathers of Oregon. 

But Jason Lee, had he not himself, and all that came 
after him been fathered by Dr. John McLoughlin, must 
have failed in the settlement of the country by Ameri- 
cans. The great historical pioneering triumph of 1843, 
which a religious denomination has sought to fix upon one 
of its members, would have been, without McLoughlin, 
a grievous historical tragedy, and would have lost instead 
of gaining us this great Northwest. 

Colonizers, unless of the Robinson Crusoe sort, must 
be enthusiasts in the first place, and men of resources 
afterwards. The mistakes which enthusiasm is liable to 
commit may be corrected by ample equipment and the 
necessity of learning from experience. But one of the 
most sadly pathetic spectacles in life is where the enthu- 
ism is present and the means, with the sympathy of one's 
fellows, are absent. 

In such a case was Hall J. Kelley, the Boston school 
teacher, who aspired to be the promoter of colonization in 
Oregon, and indirectly was so. From 1815, when he was 
twenty-six years of age, to 1824, he studied the Oregon 
question, together with plans of educational work. He 
helped to found the Boston Young Men's Education 
Society, and the Penitent Female Refuge Society. The 
first Sunday-school in New England was chiefly due to 
his efforts, and the first Sunday-school book was his work. 



Hall J . Kelley, 383 

Witli whatever disfavor some of us may remember this 
class of literature, there can be no doubt that it was 
the primer to the very general literary taste of American 
childi'en. Kelley was also a scientist of no mean acquir- 
ments, particularly in the direction of mathematics and 
engineering, submitting a system of geographical survey- 
ing for the approval of the government in 1829. With all 
this intellectual activity in other directions, the Boston 
schoolteacher gave his most serious thought from 1824 to 
1828 to a scheme for settling the American claim to Ore- 
gon, by colonization. P'or his information, other than 
politcal, he depended upon fur traders and navigators. 

Having, as he believed, educated congress and the 
American people up to an understanding of the value of 
the country, and the validity of the United States' claim, 
he was prepared to organize for action. From the simi- 
larity between some of the views put forth in his writ- 
ings and the form of the first Oregon bills brought before 
congress b}^ Floyd, of Virginia, in 1820, and later, it 
might be safely inferred that Kelley had been consulted. 
But although he petitioned congress, and interviewed 
cabinet members, he failed to obtain the co-operation and 
the means necessary to so stupendous an enterprise as 
the founding of a Pacific empire. 

The first expedition taking form under his leadership 
was iu 1828, and consisted of several hundred persons. 
They were to proceed by land, via Saint Louis, depending 
upon the pilotage of the fur companies. But if there was 
anything the fur traders Avere prepared to oppose, it was 
the irruption into the Indian country of bodies of men 
who were sure to disturb their trade relations with the 
natives. Therefore, they offered no encouragemnt to 
Kelley 's enterprise. On the part of the press of the East- 
ern States, there was actual doubt and criticism. In 
shoi't, this attempt ended in failure ; but Kelley's faith in 



384 Frances Fuller Victor. 

final success was not lessened by tlie objections of others, 
however reasonable ; and they were reasonable. The 
government was not prepared to go to war when, by sim- 
ply renewing the convention of joint occupancy of 1818, it 
could enjoy peace and take time to gather means for the 
tug of war, should it ever come to that. Congress argued 
that there was not sufficient information of a favorable 
nature about the country to justify the outlay required 
to establish and maintain military posts across the con- 
tinent. There were other matters more pressing than 
the Oregon question. The most farsighted statesmen 
joined tlie most shortsighted in opposing Kelley's scheme, 
though with a different motive. They were carefully but 
cautiously gathering up data from the annual reports of 
fur traders, the log books of mariners, and the statements 
of occasional visitors to the Northwest coast. The most 
that was promised by those in authority was that protec- 
tion would be afforded any American settlement in Ore- 
gon. With this assurance Kelley was forced to content 
himself while continuing to set forth the excellencies of 
a region he had never seen, to argue the justice of the 
American claim, and to denounce the injustice to the 
people of the United States of surrendering its riches to 
a foreign power. Not only was this aspect of the argu- 
ment impressed upon his readers, but also their duty as 
Christians, to look after the spiritual and temporal wel- 
fare of the native inhabitants of Oregon. Thus for two 
years more he labored with his pen before incorporating, 
in 1831, the American society for encouraging a settle- 
ment of the Oregon territory. It does not appear that 
any encouraging number of names was inscribed on its 
roll. His winters were spent in Washington, interview- 
ing legislators and furnishing information to whoever 
would receive it. 

Whatever interest was exhibited by congress at this 



Hall J. Kkllkv. 385 

time in the Oregon question may be ascribed to Kelley 
as the promoter. The fact that it was not powerful 
enough to overcome the inertia of the East, or to arouse 
the migratory instincts of the West, sliould not detract 
from the service actually rendered in educating the Amer- 
ican people and showing them their opportunity. That 
they were slow in availing themselves of it was a dis- 
credit neither to him nor to them. Pi-ophets have always 
been without honor in their own country, ])ecause time 
alone can verify their predictions. 

Impatient of delay and of irritating criticisms Kelley 
at length — in the autumn of 1832 — set out for (3regon, 
to see with his own eyes what he had so often described 
to others. Furnished with a passport, he chose the route 
via Mexico and California. At New Orleans the small 
party which had accompanied him at the outset aban- 
doned the enterprise. Shipping his goods intended for 
trade on the Columbia River to Vera Cruz, they were 
seized by the Mexican authorities for duties and confis- 
cated. Hoping to recover in some measure his loss, he 
offered his services to teach pedagogy to Mexican school- 
masters, even to the college at Guadalajara. The Mexi- 
cans were not sufhciently impressed at this period of 
their history with the superiority of Yankee methods 
to appreciate Kelley 's offer, who proceeded to California. 

In this dependency of Mexico reigned Figueroa as 
governor, who was quite as jealous as other Mexicans 
of the citizens of United States. He rejected Kelley' s 
proposal to make for him a survey and map of the 
Sacramento Valley, fearing, no doubt, that so much 
knowledge of the country might endanger the Mexican 
sovereignty — as afterwards it did. For Kelley made a 
surreptitious survey for himself, and a map which he 
published on returning to Boston. 
5 



386 Franc?::s Fuller Victor. 

It was while in California that Kelly fell in with a 
man who was destined to have a more immediate effect 
upon his fortunes, and upon the history of Oregon than 
all others of this period. This man was Ewing Young, 
an American trader from Taos, in New Mexico, whence 
he had led a small party, trading goods to the Califor- 
nians for horses, and to tlie Indians for furs. Young 
was a man of intelligence and of an adventurous spirit. 
Kelley revealed to him his plan for a settlement on the 
Columbia, together with his views of the American claim, 
and his desire to see the Hudson's Bay Company's hold 
on the country loosened. With this sentiment Young 
was in full accord, and being quite willing at any time to 
have an adventure, was persuaded to accompany Kelley 
to Oregon. 

If readers will take the trouble to look up the matter 
in Lee and Frost's " Oregon," they will find mention of 
seeing at their unfinished mission house on the Wallamet, 
in the autumn of 1834, "A party headed by Mr. Ewing 
Young, an American from one of the western United 
States, arrived in the Wallamet from California, embrac- 
ing about a dozen persons, most of them from the United 
States. Some of them had been sailors, some hunters 
in the mountains and in the regions bordering on Cali- 
fornia to the south, and one, Mr. Kelley, was a traveler, 
a New England man, who entertained some very ex- 
travagant notions in regard to Oregon, which he pub- 
lished on his return." 

Concerning the party. Young himself says : "When 
we set out from the last settlement I had seventy-seven 
horses and mules. Kelley and the other five men had 
twenty-one. The last nine men that joined the party 
had fifty-six." The inference from this account is that 
the party of Young and Kelley at the start consisted of 
seven persons with ninety-eight horses. They were joined 



IT ALL J. Kkllky. 387 

by nine men with fifty-six horses, making a herd of one 
hundred and fifty-four, and a joint company of seventeen 
men. Such a combination was sufficient to arouse sus- 
picion, whicli indeed the characters of some of the re- 
cruits justified, and from whicli Kelley suffered on his 
arrival on the Columbia. Before they reached the moun- 
tains of Southern Oregon, however, these men had de- 
serted, and the colonists were reduced to "about a dozen" 
as Lee relates.^ 

While Kelley and Young were yet among the moun- 
tains of Southern Oregon, the former was attacked with 
a malarial fever in camp. Young being absent looking 
for straying horses. In the midst of a severe ague Kelley 
received a visit from the leader of a Hudson's Bay party, 
Michael La Framboise, on his return from an expedition 
to San Francisco. The genial and humane Frenchman 
at once proceeded to administer botli medicines and nour- 
ishment, remaining with his patient a couple of days, 
and finally sending him in a canoe to a rendezvous, 
whence he was conducted to a camp of the Hudson's 
Bay Company. Kelley continued to travel with La 
Framboise until overtaken by Young, suffering a relapse 
w^hen deserted by his faithful nurse, who, when he had 
been too ill even to ride, had caused him to be carried 
upon the shoulders of one of his men for several miles. 

After such treatment as this, Kelley must have modi- 
fied his opinion of the company he had come so far to 
unseat. But what was his surprise to be met at the gate 
of Fort Vancouver with an edict of exclusion which em- 
braced the whole of his own and Young's party. Kelley 
being very ill was placed in a house outside the fort. 



3 The party which came to Oregon at this time were named as follows: Hall 
J. Kelley, Ewing Young, Webley John Hauxhurst, Joseph Gale, John Howard, 
Lawrence Carmichael, John McCarty, — Brandywine, - Kilborne, Elisha Eze- 
kicl, and George Winslow (colored), in all eleven men, 



388 Frances Fuller Victor. 

with a nurse, medicines, and food, but made to feel that 
he was an outcast from the society of gentlemen. 

Young, being physically as well as mentally able for 
the conflict, insisted upon an explanation of the indig- 
nities put upon himself and Kelley, and learned that 
by a vessel up from San Francisco before their arrival. 
Doctor McLoughlin had received a letter from Governor 
Figueroa of California cautioning him against having 
anything to do with Kelley and Young, or their partj^, 
as they were horse thieves and men of bad character. 
To this charge Young, for himself, returned an indignant 
protest, although forced to admit that some of the men 
who started with him had stolen horses. On his side 
Doctor McLoughlin insisted that he could have nothing 
to do with him until the matter was cleared up, and a 
copy of Figueroa 's letter was posted in the Wallamet, 
warning the French settlers and the missionaries against 
the California party. 

This proscription by the head of the Hudson's Bay 
Company in Oregon was held by Young to be an act of 
tyranny by a British corporation, which, by the most 
liberal construction, had no more rights in the Wallamet 
than himself or any other American citizen. 

The truth about Young seems to have been that he 
had been robbed of a large amount of furs in California, 
which loss had brought him in conflict with the Mexican 
government, ever too willing to wink at the spoilation 
of strangers. In retaliation of a complaint by Young 
against the Califoi'nia robbers, a charge of horse stealing 
was preferred against Young and his associates, which led 
to the confiscation of the property in question. Horse- 
stealing was a common vice of the Calif ornians, as it 
always has been of their Indian progenitors. Branding- 
animals was little protection to a purchaser, as it enabled 
the original owner from whom it had been stolen, or even 



Hall J. Kelley. 389 

purchased, to reclaim it on the pretense tliat it was stolen. 
Young hadlost $18,000 or $20,000 worth of furs in Cali- 
fornia, but he had taken away with him nearly a hundred 
horses. The first thought of a Californian would be that 
these were somewhat in the nature of a reprisal, since 
horses in Oregon were worth much more than in Cali- 
fornia. At all events Governor Figueroa thought proper 
to warn the chief of the Hudson's Bay Company against 
the Americans, and the Americans were only too ready 
to turn to political account this exhibition of authority 
by a " foreigner." 

Doctor McLoughlin, on the other hand, always desir- 
ing to be just, and by nature generous, yet the represen- 
tative of a corporation which did not feel bound to be 
either except from motives of policy, was moved by the 
indignant utterances of the Americans to inquire furthei- 
of Figueroa, from whom he finally received information 
which caused him to offer Young the privilege of pur- 
chasing goods at the company's store. This offer was 
scornfully rejected, and the Tennessee trader, as impe- 
rious in his rags as the governor of the Hudson's Bay 
Company in his broadcloth, made himself felt as a power 
in the Wallamet, defying both fur companies and mis- 
sionaries to deprive him of his rights as an American in 
Oregon, and setting an example of independence to 
others. Nor did any of Young's party prove to be un- 
worthy pioneers. One of them, Webley J. Hauxhurst, 
a New Yorker from Long Island, built a grist-mill at 
Champoeg, the first one in the valley, and afterwards 
joined the Methodist mission church. Joseph Gale be- 
came an influential member of the colony from the 
American standpoint. 

Young settled on the west side of the Wallamet, oppo- 
site Vancouver, but finding it difficult to fling off the odium 
resulting from the injurious poster, which although with- 



390 Frances Fuller Victor. 

drawn was not forgotten, resorted to the manufacture of 
whisky as a means of living. This business w^ould have 
prospered without doubt, as the mountain men now 
coming into the country, with other waifs of civiliza- 
tion, found their chief pleasure in hard drinking; but 
Young found the odium attaching to whisky-making 
scarcely less than that of horse-stealing, the difference 
being that one was recognized as a crime against law 
while the other was only an offense against the best 
public sentiment. 

As a matter of fact the opposition it aroused proved a 
fortunate circumstance to the whole community, includ- 
ing Young himself. Doctor McLoughlin, in his anxiety 
to prevent drunkenness among the old servants of the 
company and the Indians, as well as the miscellaneous 
population, added his influence to that of the missiona- 
ries in the formation of a temperance society, a majority 
of the Canadian settlers becoming members. To the re- 
monstrances of the leaders in this movement, Young re- 
plied that he did not himself have anything to say in 
favor of his project except that he needed money, but 
since it was so abhorrent to the gentlemen at the head of 
affairs in the country, he would suspend his purpose until 
time was had to consider what might be done. 

This respectful submission to the moral code of the 
upper class led the missionaries and chief at Vancouver 
to offer Young payment for his outlay if he would aban- 
don his intention. This he finally consented to. But in 
all these transactions he steadily refused to have any 
communication, personally, with Doctor McLoughlin, 
While planning to erect a saw- and grist-mill on his claim 
there arrived in the territory a secret agent of the United 
States government to whom he related his grievances. 
This agent, W. A. Slacum, of the navy, offered to lend 
Young $150 wherewith to purchase clothing at Van- 



Hall J. Kellf:v. 391 

couver. To this proposal Young assented only upon 
Slacum's agreeing to make the purchase in his own 
name. 

This obduracy in maintaining his self-respect com- 
pelled the admiration of Doctor McLoughlin, and when 
the cattle company of 1836-'37 went to California on 
Slacum's hired vessel, Young went as captain, and while 
tliere secured from Figueroa tlie retraction of liis injurious 
cliarges, as well as a settlement of his pecuniary affairs. 
It is doubtful if the cattle expedition would have been 
a success under any other man in Oregon. The financial 
agent and secretary was Philip L. Edw^ards, of the mis- 
sion,* who, in the diary kept upon his journey, continu- 
ally complained and lamented over the hardshi^Ds encoun- 
tered. In the struggle with wild cattle, wild men, and 
wild mountain travel, Edw^ards was often ready to faint. 
On one occasion, wdien "Alp on Alp" seemed to close the 
trail before them, it is recorded in Edwards' diary that 
Young said to him, " Now, if you are a philosopher, show 
yourself one!" But poor Edwards was fain to leave 
philosophizing to the mountain men wdiom custom had 
hardened for their irritating tasks. The pen of the his- 
torian can hardly honor adequately the part played in 
commonwealth-building by this class of men. In every 
great emergency they accepted the post of danger or the 
heavy burden . They neither shrank from peril nor asked 
for rewards. 

Young's share in the cattle company, wdiich was consid- 
erable, put him in a position of indeiDendence once more, 
and the respect which his resolute character inspired 
was making him one of the foremost men in the colony. 



<The other members, W. J. Bailey, Webley Hauxhurst, James O'Neil. Law- 
rence Carmichael, Calvin Tibbets, John Turner, George Gay, and two Canadians, 
De Puis and Ergnotte. Two of these, Carmichael and Hauxhurst, had come to 
Oregon with Kelley and Young. 



392 Frances Fuller Victor. 

when in 1841 he died, and his estate escheated to the 
first formed provisional government of Oregon. Ulti- 
mately it was recovered by his son and heir. Thus one 
of the results of Hall J. Kelley's colonizing scheme was 
the establishment of an American colony upon the dis- 
solving foundation of a religious one ; the organization 
of a temperance society ; the importation of cattle, and 
the final adoption of .a temporary form of government, 
witli his associate's money in its treasury.^ 

To return to the fortunes of Kelley himself, he re- 
mained excluded from tlie fort while Doctor McLoughlin 
was in correspondence with Governor Figueroa, and, in 
fact, seems to have continued to reside in hospital quar- 
ters during his stay in Oregon, partly out of resentment, 
and partly because he had no clothing fit to be worn in 
tlie society of gentlemen punctilious as those at Van- 
couver. Roberts says of him that he was dressed in 
leather pantaloons with a red stripe down the seam, a 
blanket capote, and a white slouched hat, "rather outre 
even for Vancouver." In another place he is spoken of 
by Roberts as "penniless and ill-clad, and was considered 
rather too rough for close companionship, and was not 
invited to tlie mess. Our people did not know, or care 
for, the equality he -had perhaps been accustomed to. 
It should be borne in mind that discipline in those days 
was rather severe, and a general commingling would not 
do." Kelley himself says that the cause of his exclusion 
was that Doctor McLoughlin was well informed of his 
colonization views and his writings thereon. 



•'■The sum recovered by Joaquin, son of Young, twenty-two years after the 
estate was taken charge &f by the inissionary officers was only 3S,10S.94. I am 
not aware what was the sum invested by Young in the cattle company. Jason 
Lee put in $500 advanced bySlacum, the settlers $1,100, and Doctor McLoughlin 
S900, making $2,.500. D. Lee makes it $2,880. The number of cattle that arrived 
was six hundred and thirty. Young had built a saw-mill on the Chehalem, which 
was destroyed by a flood a short time before his death. 



Hall J. Kkllky. 393 

That tliis was the true cause there can be no reason- 
able doubt. In defending liimself from the charge by 
the London company, of encouraging American coloni- 
zation, he discriminates wisely and well. What right 
had he to discourage Christian missionaries who were 
doing what the company had neglected to do for the 
Indians? This reproof caused the company to send out 
a missionary of the established church, whose insubor- 
dination and impertinence soon procured him his passage 
back to England, 

As to American traders, lie could not expel them 
from a territory held jointly by Great Britain and the 
United States ; but lie could and did beat them in a 
fair business deal. Courtesy was their due, and this 
they received. Scientists and travelers were also wel- 
comed at the fort. Colonists, while they were not en- 
couraged, could not be left to suffer from illness or hunger 
at the very gates of Vancouver. In short, while he de- 
sired to serve the company faithfully he could not neglect 
to perform his duty as a Christian and a gentleman. If 
they did not approve of that, he would step down and 
out. What else he said to the " old gentleman in Ten- 
church Street" is not known, but it is known that he 
returned from a visit to London in 1838, made to meet 
the accusations against his loyalty, with even more lib- 
eral sentiments than those laid to his charge ; and it is 
well known in Oregon that when the existence of the 
colony was threatened on more than one occasion his 
humanity was its salvation. Yet it was not altogether 
Kelley's Mexican costume that excluded Kelley from 
Vancouver society. Other travelers who had ariived in 
unpresentable ai3parel had been made presentable by the 
loan of articles from the wardrobes of the factors and 
partisans resident there at that time. It could not be 
said either that Kelley was uninteresting or uneducated. 



394 Frances Fuller Victor. 

Quite the contrary, indeed. What he liad to tell of his 
adventures in Mexico and California must have been 
just the sort of tales to while away winter evenings in 
Bachelors' Hall. 

I fancy tiie situation was about this : McLoughlin 
was prepared to dislike Kelley even without Governor 
Figueroa's condemnation, on account of his published 
denunciation of the Hudson's Bay Company. He was 
under no obligation to admit liim to tlie society^ of the 
fort, although he would not have him suffer sickness or 
hunger under the shadow of its walls. The fact that he 
was an American while giving him a patriotic excuse, if 
not motive, for ignoring Kelley's claims on his compas- 
sion, also, on the other hand, furnished a politic motive 
for indulging his natural humanity. For at that time 
there were several Americans being entertained at Van- 
couver — Nathaniel J. Wyetli, a trader from Boston, the 
missionary party of four, and two scientists, J. K. Town- 
send, naturalist, and Thomas Nuttall, botanist, who had 
traveled under the protection of Wyeth's company as far 
as the hunting grounds of the Hudson's Bay Company, 
which had then taken them in charge. The treaty-rights 
of Wyeth were not disputed, nor the scientific observa- 
tions of the scholars opposed. It was Kelley, as colon- 
izer and defamer of the company, who was unwelcome, 
even after it was evident that there was no stain on his 
character. 

This was perfectly understood by Kelley, and it was 
not McLoughlin 's disapproval of him which wounded 
his sensitive pride. It was the conduct of his own coun- 
trymen, — of Wyeth whose name was on his colonization 
company's roll ; of the Harvard men, his neighbors, 
who liad for years been familiar with his writings, and 
of the missionary Lees, Avho had been inspired, so he 
contended, by his labors to undertake theirs of Christian- 



ITali> .1. Kkllky. 395 

izing the Indians of Oregon. 1 think, myself, tluit tlie 
behavior of tliese men was cowardly, and T set the con- 
duct of Young high above theirs. 

Cyrus Shepard, that gentle Christian, wliom every- 
body loved, and who was employed at the fort to teach 
the children of the compan}^, was the only missionary 
who openly visited Kelley. Jason Lee, according to 
Kelley when at Vancouver, paid him clandestine visits in 
the night time, to learn his plans. At these interviews 
Kelley became satisfied that Lee, on account of pecuniary 
obligations to McLoughlin, feared to acknowledge his 
acquaintance with Kelley or his designs, and would by 
no means seem to favor them. 

Nuttall, who was a Cambridge man, was well ac- 
quainted with Kelley's writings, owing to them, Kelley 
believed, his idea of studying the botany of Oregon. But 
Nuttall, as well as the Lees, thought too highly of his 
privileges at Vancouver to risk them by acknowledging 
this fact. And Wyeth, who w^as not like himself, an 
educated man, never having learned to spell correctly, 
or to introduce in his writings capitals and punctuation 
points where they belonged, and who had led as far as 
Vancouver as many free Americans as had Young and 
himself — Wyeth, wiio when in Massachusetts was one of 
his prospective colonists, — was on the Columbia River 
utterly indifferent to him.*' 

This treatment of Kelley by his countrymen must 
have been construed at Vancouver as condemnatory, 
although its shrewd and magnanimous chief may have 
guessed a little of its meaning and sought to make 



"Some of Wyeth's men remained in Oregon as settlers. J. Ball died some 
years ago in Michigan. Solomon Smith died a few years ago, and his son, Silas 
B. Smith, is an active member of the Oregon Historical Society. Those who 
remained for a while were Abbott, Breck, Burdett, Sargent, St. Clair, Tibbets, 
Trumbull, and Whittier. C. M. Walker came as an assistant to the Lees, and 
remained. 



396 Frances Fuller Victor. 

amends by unremitting care of the sick and neglected 
man. 

Kelley's experiences were not of a kind to inspire 
an ambition for colonization. Even Young in his wrath 
at having been induced to come to so inhospitable a 
country cursed him as the author of his misfortunes. 
That Kelley did not die under this accumulation of con- 
demnation and disappointmeiit shows him to have been 
of a tough and yielding rather than a highly tempered 
metal. 

Notwithstanding his frequent relapses he found oppor- 
tunities to explore the country in the neighborhood of 
Vancouver, and to survey the Columbia River to its 
mouth. He made maps, and wrote a very intelligent 
and correct account of the Avhole territory then known as 
"the Oregon," its topography, mountains, timber, har- 
bors, climate, soil, and minerals, pointing out the facili- 
ties for shipbuilding, manufactures and commerce. This 
information was, on his return to tlie states, combined in 
a memoir to congress, from which members undoubtedly 
drew much of the information which was occasionally 
displayed in both houses. He renamed the Cascade 
Mountains, calling them the Presidents' Range ; naming 
also the snow peaks, beginning with Saint Helen, and 
proceeding south, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madi- 
son, Monroe, J. Q. Adams, and Jackson — the last named 
being Shasta. Adams and Jefferson onl}^ have been re- 
tained by common consent. 

As Kelley's quarters were outside the fort there was 
no hindrance to communication with the twenty or more 
Americans and others owing no allegiance to the British 
corporation. That Kelley was visited by these freemen, 
from whom he derived much assistance in his labors of 
exploration, is more than probable. An examination of 
the countrj^ showed him that the junction of tlie Walla- 



Ha 1,1, .) . KioM.KY. ']d~ 

met, at or near its upper moiitli, with the Ooliinibia- was 
a proper site for a city. It would, by being witliin th(! 
Walhimet, possess a safe harbor. Being south of tlie 
Columbia, it would be on the American side in case the 
country north of the great river should go to Great Britain 
in any future treaty ; and being at the mouth of the 
Wallamet would receive for distribution to the outside 
world the products of the valley above. Commerce with 
the valley would be impeded at the falls, to which ship- 
ping could not approach within several miles, and a town 
w^ould be built up there wdiich might become the capital 
of the future state. The land between would naturally 
fall into the hands of the commercial part of the popula- 
tion, and Kelley provided for that by tracts of from forty 
to sixty acres reserved for manufactures and large busi- 
ness plants. 

Towns, which in modern times occupy carefully 
selected situations, were usually in the past located by 
accident or incident. Thus Portland became the com- 
mercial city of Oregon because one of the owners of the 
land on which it stands happened to observe after pur- 
chasing it signs that sailing vessels had made an anchor- 
age there. Acting on the thought suggested, a townsite 
was laid out, which w^as unexpectedly fostered by the 
coming of vessels from California during the gold mining 
period for provisions and lumber. 

But Kelley, although he was hoping for some such 
developments sometime, was proceeding on a perfectly 
original and independent plan to work towards it. The 
site selected for a seaport was on Gray's Bay, opposite 
and above Fort George, where five scjuare miles would 
be laid out in a marine metropolis. Streets were to run 
from the river bisecting the others at right angles. At 
the distance of every two squares an area of ten acres 
was reserved for parade or pleasure grounds. The width 



398 Fkaxces Fuller Victor. 

of the main street was one hundred feet, the middle of 
which was to be devoted to a public market. The land 
adjoining this and other towns was to be so subdivided 
as to give two hundred acres to each immigrant over 
fourteen years of age — married women excepted. Rec- 
tangular surveying of land and laying out of roads were 
recommended, while other details, extending even to 
missionary work among the natives, were attended to, 
many of which afterwards appeared in bills before con- 
gress. 

One is reminded of Kelle3"'s instrumentality in the 
settlement of Oregon by the improvements at present 
being made on "the peninsula," where stands the mill 
town of Saint John, the terminus of the Oregon Railroad 
and Navigation Company's road, and the Portland (Cath- 
olic) University, as well as by the long line of warehouses 
between Saint John and East Portland proper. Kelley 
particularly honored the peninsula by adding to his writ- 
ings a line plan of tlie town which he designed for that 
point. As a site for a city it has some excellent features, 
one of which is space to grow^ Ultimately it will become 
a part of Greater Portland, but before it becomes absorbed 
in Portland, it would be a gracious suggestion to let it 
come in under the name of its intending colonizer, Hall 
J. Kelley. 

It is impossible to show any other American at so 
early a period not only devoting himself to the intel- 
lectual labor of discussing the Oregon question, and to 
promoting colonization societies, but Avho undertook and 
overcame, without support, the cost and the perils of 
immigration with the sole object of verifying his teach- 
ings to the country. So completely was he sustained in 
his general views that we feel surprised at this day to 
notice how closely they agree with w^hat is now known 
of this reuion. That he was later in life a victim of 



IlAi.i, J. Kellkv. 399 

nervous disorders which compelled him to mingle with 
Ills writings complaints of the neglect of government to 
a wearisome degree, is true ; but for this a compassion- 
ate allowance sliould be made. The sufferings and dis- 
appointments he endured on his journey to, and his 
residence in, Oregon were very great, and few men of 
his slight physical endowments could have withstood 
them. It is only justice to agree Avith him that he set 
on foot by his writings the immigration movement to 
the shores of the Pacific in all its forms, whether mis- 
sionary, commercial, or colonizing. 

That his countrj^men in Oregon acted a cowardly part 
may be agreed to, and also that Doctor McLoughlin ap- 
peared in the character of a tyrant to his American con- 
ception of the meaning of that word. For all this I have 
shown that there is an explanation, albeit it did not com- 
fort poor Kelley. Only Doctor McLoughlin was in a 
position to show some magnanimity, which he did by 
giving Kelley a passage to the Sandwich Islands in the 
company's vessel in the spring of 1836. This might be 
construed as a "good riddance," had not the doctor sent 
with his pass a present of £7 sterling with which to pro- 
cure necessary comforts. This, it would seem, should 
have been done by others. 

If we compare the unprotected and unpaid services of 
Kelley with the paid and protected services of Lewis and 
Clark, we have to acknowledge that a debt of appreciation 
and public recognition, at least, is due to the Yankee 
schoolmaster wdio spent the best years of his life in teach- 
ing the United States government and people the value 
of the Oregon territory. 

Kelley was born in Gilmantown, New Hampshire, in 
1789, was graduated at Middlebury, Connecticut, received 
the degree of master of arts at Harvard, taught in the 
public schools of Boston, and at the age of thirty -one 



LIBRARY OF C0NOKt:>a 

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400 Frances Fuller Victor, 

published tlie American Instructor, valued at that time as 
an important contribution to the science of teaching. He 
was twenty-six when he began w^riting on the Oregon 
question, and forty-three when he set out to come to 
Oregon. The latter part of his life was spent in his 
hermitage at Three Rivers, Massachusetts, where he died 
aged eighty-five. 

The titles to Kelley's writings would fill a page of 
this magazine. He was too enthusiastic not to be vis- 
ionary, but passages out of his brochures might be sus- 
pected of having been written within the last decade, 
from the likeness of the descriptions and the prophecies 
for the future of the country. Yet these were in print 
more than three quarters of a century ago. Although 
scattered broadcast then, in the Eastern and Middle 
States, they are "rare" now, few libraries possessing 
copies. 

FRANCES FULLER VICTOR. 




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